Be honest: around $400 was always a bit much for a single-task device.

The Kindle DX has been retired from Amazon's e-reader lineup, as reported by the-eBook-Reader.com on Monday. While the e-reader with the 9.7-inch display held onto its place in Amazon's store for over three years, the Kindle DX has been outpaced in price-to-capability ratio by Amazon's competitors.

The Kindle DX, a super-sized version of Amazon's regular E Ink Kindle, first debuted in the summer of 2009 and initially retailed for $489. The DX's price fell incrementally over the years, holding steady for some time at $379 before falling to $299 last week in an apparent attempt to sell through remaining stock.

Amazon has yet to comment publicly on the matter (we'll update if they respond to our request for comment), so it's unclear if the white (or black) whale is actually dead or just going dormant in the face of an update. But given that Amazon just held an event to announce a slew of new products and the DX didn't merit a mention, it's likely time to say goodbye and goodnight.

But we can't be too sad: nearly $400 for a giant, single-task, slow-moving slab of an e-reader was increasingly difficult to justify in a landscape that includes the $119 Kindle Paperwhite, $200 Nexus 7, $200 Kindle Fire HD, or $399 iPad 2. None of them are exactly the same, but as the tablet and e-reader markets develop, it's clear that the Kindle DX no longer made the right compromises.

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

However, as of this posting it's back to a 0 score on the voting, so clearly there aren't many that think it's that bad.

Usually people who post like that don't have the product or anything even similar and question why anyone would want something like that. I do have something else that fills the idea of being able to read easily on the go (iPad 3), but e-ink and the price never impressed me. Yes its battery lasts longer, but I can't read it in low light, like I can a backlit tablet. Not experiencing eye fatigue from lcd screens renders the benefit of e-ink moot, therefore I chose something more full featured. I didn't feel it was the same sort of category and it was a valid opinion on things. The new voting system is still kind of questionable some nights

I think the only reason it was a 0 was b/c the previous poster upvoted me. I had to upvote his wondering why I got downvoted to put him back to 0

I agree with others -- if Amazon had cared at all about the DX and upgraded it even once (even the software didn't get updated!), I would have jumped at one. The normal Kindle is too small for pdfs that can't be reflowed, but the DX is just too slow to even keep around...remember how slow kindles used to be? Thumbing through articles is a very random access task, much more so than reading a novel, so you feel it even more as you try to find the reference you were thinking of. It's a pretty bad experience.

So yes, we can be sad and we can blame Amazon for letting it become obsolete. I would probably pay a good bit more than $400 for a DX with all the latest paperwhite tech, but I understand that that market is probably too small to justify the investment.

However, as of this posting it's back to a 0 score on the voting, so clearly there aren't many that think it's that bad.

Usually people who post like that don't have the product or anything even similar and question why anyone would want something like that. I do have something else that fills the idea of being able to read easily on the go (iPad 3), but e-ink and the price never impressed me. Yes its battery lasts longer, but I can't read it in low light, like I can a backlit tablet. Not experiencing eye fatigue from lcd screens renders the benefit of e-ink moot, therefore I chose something more full featured. I didn't feel it was the same sort of category and it was a valid opinion on things. The new voting system is still kind of questionable some nights

I think the only reason it was a 0 was b/c the previous poster upvoted me. I had to upvote his wondering why I got downvoted to put him back to 0

I wasn't saying I agree with people down voting Besides, one or two people down voting you, which gets overturned a few minutes later, isn't all that big of a deal and doesn't imply the voting system is off.

However, I do disagree that an ipad fits the same utility as a kindle. I have both, and the extra weight of the ipad, the lower battery life, the drastically different lighting requirements make them behave incredibly differently. It's a lot like comparing a computer monitor to a TV. Both LCDs, sure, they're designed for different purposes. A computer monitor can function as a TV, but often is smaller, doesn't have speakers, and lacks the inputs a TV has. A TV is better for video from non-computer sources, but often has issues with getting overscan working, worse color reproduction, input lag, blah blah blah.

Very similar with a kindle vs an ipad. The kindle is designed to display BW text the best way possible. The ipad can also do this, but with trade offs.

Now, it appears that for you, those tradeoffs don't matter, but for most they do.

The Kindle DX is just too low resolution, too little supported for me.

I have long wanted a tablet to display my sheet music collection. I've found that sheet music PDFs seem to work best at over 1000 horizontal pixels. The Kindle DX was pushing acceptability at 824x1200 and slow page updates, so I looked for another reason to get the DX.

The other big draw was the free cellular data with the experimental web browser. But the DX was stuck on Kindle Software version 2.5 while the WebKit browser was introduced in version 3. So, no compelling reason to get a DX.

Now the iPad is out with the gorgeous 1536x2048 screen and the much faster page updates. The problems are (a) Apple's insanely restrictive ecosystem and (b) no free cellular. I think I can live with these restrictions, just as soon as I save enough money to buy one. I would have been much more tempted to buy a Kindle DX if Amazon had updated it.

It's kind of sad to see Casey supporting a monoculture. $400 is too much money in a world where diamond iphone cases and the Bugatti Veyron exists?

You know what's sad? 20 different ereaders with the same damn screen size. Dozens of 'different' phones that are the same damn black slab, usually with the same Android OS. Same with tablets, were the 10 commandments given in a 10" size, forever considered perfect?

Let's celebrate diversity. The DX was awesome and it was awesome that you had a choice, even if they probably built the only batch two years ago and never had to replenish their stock because the demand was so low. The arguments above for helping the handicap are compelling, and it's sad that the market can't support this product. Sometimes things don't have to be generally superior or offer superior value to be awesome. Sometimes it's better to be worse.

The Kindle DX is just too low resolution, too little supported for me.

Depending on what you're doing with it, the low resolution can a real impediment, or it can not matter at all. Because the pixels have sharp edges, the visual resolution is much higher, and it's really hard to tell it apart from newsprint. For its primary purpose, that of reading text sequentially, the screen is perfect. You just couldn't come up with a better overall tech, though of course it can be improved, like with the new paperwhite stuff.

But for applications where you're not reading text, like with a PDF (even when it's just a PDF *of* text), then the low resolution becomes an issue. And the slow updating is fairly maddening for trying to move around quickly.

It's a single-purpose device, but wow is it ever good at that single purpose. And it doesn't really need support -- Calibre converts most things quite well to .mobi, which is the 'native' format of the device*, so even if Amazon never updates it again, it will stay useful to me until it breaks.

* Well, really, AZW is the native format, but that's just .mobi with a couple of bytes changed in the specification.

What's unfortunate on this is that people like my grandfather, who is mostly blind, liked this device. he was able to enjoy a lot of material by using the text-to-speech feature with the larger screen. When the speech system would garble a word, he could enlarge it on screen enough to read it. Now, you're going to say "but the iPad/galaxy tab/kindle Fire HD/Whatever has the same size screen and can zoom even MORE. Which is true. However, being mostly blind, and 90, touch screens are harder to navigate compared to devices with physical buttons you can feel for. Plus, the text-to-speech is not present in many of the e-readers on the iPad/galaxy tab/blahblahblah. True, it's a niche case. Also true, you CAN use other solutions. But this was something familiar, that worked, and gave him back access to Science News and other print sources that are difficult to use with limited sight. I don't blame them for making a choice to end it when it was likely not at all feasible to maintain. but it's still disappointing.

eg0nomic>What about vBookz for iPad? The original reader was just for Project Guttenburg ebooks, but now you can upload epub/ebooks and it does text to speech on all of them. I would think an app like that paired w/the accessibility options in the iPad would handle the situation. Just an idea.

This is in fact, very sad for me. I got first a Kindle 2nd Ed. And then I got a DX 2nd Ed. two years ago. My only mistake: to get the normal Kindle first instead of getting the DX straight.

I use the Kindle mostly to read PDFs, but I also use it to read books. I understand it's a bit big for daily commuting, but personally I never had a complain. Also, the price was way too much, but I'm sure they could do something to lower it...

But the real problem is that now, I don't have any option for when my DX breaks:

a) A Kindle Fire or a tablet. Bad option. I don't want to read from a backlighted screen. And I can get almost one month of battery life with my Kindle --> Great for travelling abroad without chargers, even for holidays. Especially if you have to carry power adaptors for international locations...

b) A normal Kindle. They so small that they suck for reading anything but text ebooks. Try to print an ARS page to PDF and then read it on the screen... Or get any PNAS/Science/Nature paper and read them on a small Kindle.

c) A third-party 10 inches e-reader. Well, how would I be supossed to access my already paid Amazon content? Is decryypting your paid copies in order to use them on a non-compatible device legal? Sure it's not...

So I hope that my DX keeps in good shape until a good compromise solution appears.